Rent Free Guy (2021)

A Good Laugh - Free Guy review by GI

A cheerfully silly comedy that is held together by Ryan Reynolds goofy charisma. A huge CGI extravaganza that is set inside a popular video game where an NPC (non player character) named 'Guy' (Reynolds) lives a routine life as a bank clerk and accepts the daily bank robberies and shoot outs that goes on around him. He gradually becomes self aware and realises what world he's trapped in and starts to affect and influence the game much to the consternation of the real world gamers and especially the game's evil corporate owner, Antwan, played brilliantly by Taika Waititi. The revelation that Guy is a program that has is the first evidence of artificial intelligence prompts game designer Millie (Jodie Comer) to enter the game as a character and with the help of Guy find the evidence that Antwan stole the computer codes from her and her partner. This cues plenty of comedy action and allows Reynolds to display his full screen talents. The whole thing is a riff on The Truman Show (1998), The Matrix (1999) and a host of other films and there's a heavy splattering of in-jokes that you'll have fun spotting as well as some funny cameos some of which are the character voices. I found myself enjoying this despite myself, I didn't expect much but this entertaining and great fun.

Hugely entertaining - Free Guy review by PC

Kind of like a cross between The Truman Show and Ready Player One, this is just a big fun movie that will have you laughing throughout. Some of your enjoyment may depend on whether you like Ryan Reynolds but I thought it was extremely funny!

Pygmalion what have you done?... - Free Guy review by Strovey

Free Guy is not original, take a few steps back and you are looking at a mangled version of Wreck-It-Ralph, which was funnier and more entertaining, and with a loose thread you can trace back to Blade Runner, the awful I Robot, A.I. and even Lars and the Real Girl, all of which go back further to the sculpture and statue coming to live and indeed love, Pygmalion. Okay, it is tenuous but boil the meat off the bones and you the story of something inanimate, created by the protagonist, coming to live and learning to live, love, hate and all points in between. Is the ‘statue’ really alive, is Free Guy really alive? That is the story, the trick is what you do with that story, how you package and what tricks and traps you add to it.

The initial setup with Ryan Reynolds and his friend – the problems that throws up with the storyline are brushed over so I will brush over too – Buddy, played with charming likeableness by Lil Rel Howery, sets the story up and sets it up well. It is amusing and shows the life of the NPCs to some effect. The real problems start when the ‘player’ of Molotov Girl, played by the latest British star to catch the evil eye of Hollywood, Jodie Cromer, sashays her way onto the screen. Guy is immediately affected by her she is the one.

Perhaps it was just me but there was no chemistry between Cromer and Reynolds at all on the screen, nothing. I just could not see his bland character falling for her even blander character, they were strictly 'pass by in the street characters' with ne’er a glance back. But we are being set up for an unlikely computer character love match with a ‘real person’ – interesting perhaps but how do you get yourself out of this?

The answer is double up with another chemistry-free love-interest, so it is a love triangle between three people none of which you believe even looked like they would be friends, yup, it is Walter ‘Keys’ McKee played by Joe Keery, who unfortunately was not believable as love-interest or a game genius, but he tried hard.

The film runs with two stories side by side in-game and real-world, neither is sufficiently interesting or believable enough to keep your attention. True there are some fun moments, some truly impressive screen effects but these alone do not make a great, or even good, film.

The biggest problem for me is the casting. All the main cast are reasonable actors with decent work behind them but in this film it did not work. Cromer and Keery come straight off the back of hugely popular television shows but for crying out loud that is not a reason to cast someone, well it is if you want to make money and get bums on seats, but they must fit together and in this film they do not. Reynolds, Cromer and Keery have no chemistry between them – they are inert. The star, Ryan Reynolds, like a lot of ‘stars’ in Hollywood seems to get by playing the same character in every movie, in this one he is the harmless version, in Deadpool, he is the harmful version, but it is the same character. Deadpool is much a better version, so perhaps a violent, nasty, foul-mouthed Ryan Reynolds is better.

For a film where one of the characters is a computer-generated, bland, one-dimensional NPC it takes some skill to make the most seemingly computer-generated, bland, one-dimensional character a human being in the real world. Taika Waititi chews the scenery with obvious delight, clearly thinks everyone is having as much fun as he is.

Despite the effects, the video game tropes and nods, after a while your attention starts to wander, only the introduction of the monstrous 6-foot 7-inch Aaron W Reed as a sort of ‘super-Free-Guy’ brings you attention back online, here there is some funny moments.

The story peters out to a huge lame ending that makes no sense